music reviews

The Go Find - Everybody Knows It’s Gonna Happen Only Not Tonight

The Go Find - Everybody Knows It’s Gonna Happen Only Not Tonight
[Morr Music, 2010]

I fell in love with the Belgian band The Go Find from the very first album, from the cover (Soviet-kindergarten-like paintings with boats and palms) and most certainly to the music. Naive and beautiful simplicity, hot summer in December and stuff like that… On the third album, the picture changes from summer-water landscapes to the same type of drawing, winter-mountains, but the essence of the sound stays the same. Electronic guitar pop and mellow sound, with the vocals that sound like melted butter. Dieter Sermeus sounds a bit sad at times, and always calm. And the soothing (but pretty fast) rhythms keeps on throughout the album.

The lyrics are as sad as the voice (sometimes joined by female vocals). Like on “Love Will Break Us Up” (don’t tell me you haven’t thought instantly of Joy Division), “You always full of life / Me, always ten steps behind.” I especially liked a merry “One Hundred Percent” (featuring Karolien Van Ransbeeck of Few Bit), a simple and sweet “Cherry Pie” and “It’s Automatic”, reminding the most of the old works… Yet, the whole album sounds very… together’y, very beautiful and composed, and it’s hard to mentally stress one song over another.

The label’s website describes “Everybody Knows…” as the following metaphor: “Imagine the sound of cereal hit by milk in the morning, only heard if you listen closely. A sound that is comforting and addictive.” Little less can be said. A nice and casual sound, home-like, very warm and simple.

Read & Listen:
Official website
The Go Find Myspace

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Massive Attack - Heligoland

Massive Attack - Heligoland
[Virgin, 2010]

It’s been hard for me to get to writing about the new Massive Attack album. To the point where it might not be considered new anymore. It’s extremely good and unfathomable in its beauty and depth.

I have no idea what could be done today to say another word in trip hop without being repetitive. The Bristol Massive Attack did it. Possibly the last word in trip hop as a genre at all - like they ‘opened’ it in the early ’90s, Heligoland can be put into the top lists of 2010, no matter who releases what after this. Lots of collaborations - with old acquaintances like Horace Andy and Martina Topley-Bird, whose vocals have virtually melted into the Bristol sound. Also, mellow Damon Albarn on “Saturday Come Slow,” Guy Garvey of Elbow on “Flat Of The Blade.” TV On The Radio’s lead singer, Tunde Adebimpe, on the opening shamanic “Pray for Rain.” A specifically magical “Paradise Circus” with Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star - the voice of a 20 year old, while in fact she’s twice as old… Clapping that makes you try to clap along. A sheer beauty of “Psyche” with Martina gets another few inches deeper in your heart…

The chemical formula of Heligoland is not easy to understand, the success of the album can’t be broken down into collaborations, or Daddy G reappearing on the staff, or an intervention of some special muse. The music, whatever caused it, is on the edge of heaven and hell. Slight, piercing and very, very affecting, sending shivers down your spine and making your head spin.

Read & Listen:
Massive Attack on Myspace
Massive Attack official site
Paradise Circus film

Paradise Circus - Gui Boratto Remix

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The Radio Dept. - Heaven’s on fire (song)

The Radio Dept. with each release… not stay the same… not get better… But - stay very likable, and among the all-time favorites. With their warmth, plush and a bit of raggedness. These Swedes complete the line of simple joys: staring out of the window, holding a cup of hot tea. Heaven’s On Fire is an airy song, holding onto the thin piano threads, with shoegaze-shabby sound, not so easy to understand lyrics.

It seems like everyone you know is on your side – constantly moving against the tide

And the beginning sounds quite socially active: “People see rock’n'roll as youth culture. When youth culture becomes monopolized by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus copious process that is destroying youth culture.”

This is the music that pretends to be written by a friend of yours, when you listen to it for the first time, it seems that you’ve known it for a long long while.

Waiting for the album, Clinging To A Scheme, due out in April 2010.

The Radio Dept. - Heaven’s On Fire mp3

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Hot Chip – One Life Stand

Hot Chip – One Life Stand
[EMI, 2010]

Hot Chip is a trend becoming a legend. This British electronic band first appeared five (or more) years ago, at once becoming a “new hype” and a sensation. With time, however, unlike many other bright, but not lasting stars, they haven’t disappeared and haven’t lost their freshness. Instead, for the fourth album, they moved from being indie kids and occupying a narrow niche to being almost mainstream, and earning a Grammy nomination on the way. Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard (who, by the way, recently released a solo album) make music that is invariably uplifting, even in its more lyrical ways. Many of their hits claim a place in year’s top tens – they are so glued to the inside of your ears without any chance of getting them out of there until you’ve listened about a hundred times on repeat. One Life Stand is no exception. Unlike the previous album, Made In The Dark, it has less collaborative effort of the whole band, most of the songs were written by Goddard and Taylor. The result? One Life Stand (a track) is one of the best love songs. Thieves In The Night, Take It In, I Feel Better are songs that stand out just a little bit from the whole album surface, On Alley Cats I could swear I was listening to the Kings of Convenience, and We Have Love sounds like a twin of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. And all this as a whole sounds very organic. A very mature work that’s also highly addictive and entertaining. Nothing else to desire.

Read & Listen:
Hot Chip official website
Hot Chip Livestream

Watch live streaming video from hotchip at livestream.com

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Four Tet – There Is Love in You

Four Tet – There Is Love in You
[Domino, 2010]

Kieran Hebden once again proved that he’s a true magician. The new Four Tet album “There Is Love In You” makes your heart skip a beat, which is a very rare quality. Luckily, it doesn’t happen all 47 minutes of its play, otherwise I’d get a stroke somewhere within the first listen. Some moments bring you to a neuron orgasm, and the rest of the time it’s foreplay with eardrums, lengthy audio tenderness… All this really sounds like lovemaking – affectionate, slow, immaculate. When you’re expecting a bright finale, and instead get several more minutes of elongated pleasure. Ecstatic theme continues from the previous LP, “Everything Ecstatic”. Alright, so much for erotic themes, let’s get to music.
Continuous loops, infinite swagging of tracks, it’s all not so much about crescendo as about getting you to some other level of perception. The magic begins with the beautiful opening track Angel Echoes, which gave name to the album title, there is love in you. The phrase repeats over and over in a soft female vocals, with bells and rhythms bogging you about a meter down. The next piece, single Love Cry, keeps you in the thick of this electronic water enhanced with oxygen. The influence of Burial on Hebden in the past years is obvious, and Love Cry proves it every second and every beat. Nine minutes of wholesome enjoyment in minor and dark tones. The rhythms are responsible for half of the hypnotic effect, the other half provided by loops and melodic. This is true not only for this track, but for the whole of the album.

After the first two diamonds, the album gets into a more quiet place. This doesn’t spoil the sound, just gets you to catch your breath for a while. Additional moments of pure joy are Sing – which is surprisingly reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker”. This Unfolds does what it says – unfolds slowly, like quiet snow falling to the ground or clouds surfing the sky, then rhythms add up. And it’s impossible to stop listening to Plastic People, a touchy six-minute track, again making you think of Burial.

A wonderful album for social meditations, asocial comatose and other autistic manifestations in the social environment.

Read & Listen:
Four Tet official site
Four Tet on Myspace
Angel Echoes
Angel Echoes (BBC session)  by  Four Tet

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The Tough Alliance - Prison Break EP

The Tough Alliance - Prison Break EP
[Sincerely Yours, 2009]

Eric Berglund and Henning Fürs have been silent for a long while, and here comes a little, but intense release, Prison Break EP. Six remixes - all of them highly addictive, in the Tough Alliance manner, with enhanced danceability. One of the tracks is a mashup of an old TTA “First Class Riot” with a newer (but not really new) “A Touch of Jules & Jim” by jj. The rest are a number of disruptive remixes of “Neo Violence” (who would have thought?) - by Laidback Luke, Shazam and Woolfy, “First Class Riot” remixed by El Guincho and “A New Chance” by Juan Maclean.

As a result, at some times, you get a dose of high-quality techno and/or house, and the next minute inject yourself with the purest TTA cocaine. All together is perfect for a party - to get your frozen blood flowing again in the middle of winter.

Read & Listen:
The Tough Alliance Myspace
Prison Break on Sincerely Yours
“A New Chance (The Juan Maclean Remix)” mp3

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Delphic - Acolyte

Delphic - Acolyte
[Polydor, 2010]

Right now Delphic (of Manchester) is the hottest new thing. Several months before the Acolyte release, the album was proclaimed by critics as the greatest debut of the coming year (or, at least, the first loudest one). The second single, This Momentary (with the video from Chernobyl), made us wait for the release and at the same time worry that it wouldn’t be able to match our expectations. Fortunately, that’s not what happened. Acolyte is a fine work. It’s hard to compare Delphic to anything (I mean, to only one thing), and the style “alternative dance” gives only a vague impression. They sound like Bloc Party, Orbital (they’ve been opening for these two), Underworld, M83 (having their producer, Ewan Pearson), dance version of The Notwist… And at times they also sound like Duran Duran (on Submission). The 80s are not their strongest point. What Delphic are good at is combining beautiful guitars, great lyrics and danceability… Sounding like a million bands and artists at once, and not like anyone of them in particular, is probably the sign of true talent today, when all the harmonies have seemingly been found and all music styles created.

Counterpoint

This Momentary

Read & Listen:
Delphic on Myspace
Delphic on R.FM
Delphic on Twitter

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Hot Chip - One Life Stand (song)

February will see the release of a new Hot Chip album, “One Life Stand”. For now, an eponymous track, and quite a good remix to add - Joris Voorn Dusty Flower remix. By the way, Joe Goddard’s solo album somehow slipped by. At least, with the first couple of listens I haven’t got anything to say. Unlike One Life Stand - just the right rhythms for the time in-between winter holidays when you need to get to work.

Hot Chip - One Life Stand (Joris Voorn Dusty Flower remix) by MrLukowski

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Animal Collective - Fall Be Kind (EP)

Animal Collective - Fall Be Kind (EP)
[Domino, 2009]

The year started with Animal Collective, with Animal Collective it ends - very successfully at both. Merriweather Post Pavilion irrevocably placed them into the mainstream and brought about a round of applause on the critics’ part. And the current EP only gives a foothold for this.

With most sincerity: I adore Animal Collective. I’ve said numerous times how they influence me personally and help me deal with the chaos around. But I also love them for the fact that they’ve been doing the music they like for such a long time, despite it being too “niche” and somewhat out of place - and now they created a space in this seemingly overcrowded place, and made the so-called mass market embrace them. Five new tracks are not the brightest ones in the now rich band discography. If you imagine that this is the first thing you hear by Animal Collective, maybe you won’t readily grasp them - it’d be better to start off with something like Strawberry Jam or Feels. But for the prepared ear, this music melts in your ears and in-between them, like honey. “Bleeding,” by the way, is a very flow-y song, built primarily on vocals and dragging you into the dreamy ambient. “What Would I Want? Sky” has a sample from good old Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain,” although a rare fan of both bands, divided by generations, can recognize it.

A beautiful bacchanalia: tingling, flowing, rushing and sometimes roaring, but most of all reminding you of elvish flirting in a magic wood. Frisky dancing to the flute (on “Graze”), noise of a close, you’d think, highway (”On A Highway”) - while walking the frailest of paths, and, finally, a true magic and mystery on the closing “I Think I Can,” with shamanic mantras, when the trees and the bushes have thickened around you. All this is quite far from anything you’d expect a modern music scene would bring, but at the same time, it’s nothing but Animal Collective.

Read & Listen:
Official website
Animal Collective Myspace
Animal Collective accidentally leak the EP (via Hotcakes)
Pitchfork news
Preview of Fall Be Kind

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BEAK> - BEAK>

BEAK> - BEAK>
[Invada, 2009]

Sensation of (help me here) year/season/whatever… BEAK> (mentioned in August) is a trio with Portishead’s Geoff Barrow as the centerpiece, with Billy Fuller who’s been performing with Massive Attack, and Matt Williams (Team Brick). Looks like for Barrow it’s a step away or vacation from Portishead approach. The music for BEAK> was recorded within 12 days in one room, almost without any post-production. (While with Beth Gibbons, Barrow massively processes and works on each and every sound.)

The BEAK> album is a tenacious, sticky improvisation flow. Intuitive composition is very emotional, but to feel through the whole palette, you need to get caught up in it from the start, and then, with each new listen, in different moods, you’ll be opened to new sides of it all. That’s why my main advice would be not to make my mistake and try to listen for the first time in a work environment. All you’ll hear would be slowing and speeding rhythms and occasional voices like from a horror movie. While the album as a whole can be compared to reading Sartre or Kierkegaard. With due revelations.

Read & Listen:
BEAK> website
Beak on Myspace
Beak - I Know mp3 download
Listen to/download Battery Point

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